Monday, February 5, 2018

Asimov Had Its Backwards

Issac Asimov in his Foundation series, the core of which was written in the time period from 1942 to 1953, imagined two foundations, one made up of physical scientists on a metal poor planet at the galactic fringe whose technological advancement was limited by a lack of metal resources, and a second secret one, made up of psycho-historians (precision sociologists) at the galactic center.

Metal poor regions of the kind he imagined were a home for his public first Foundation of physical scientists do exist. But, it turns out that they are in the galactic core and not at the galactic fringe as he imagined. We now know, 65 years later, that Asimov's concept wasn't totally unsound, but that he had it backwards.